Grow Where You Are Planted
Pastor’s Column
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 15, 2013
Like many of you, I planted many tomato plants this spring; and, if there was any flaw with this system, it was that they all seemed to bear fruit right at the same time. I also had this rather awful groundcover that I had dug up and discarded last winter; but I also saved a little bit to make a nice potted plant (because it can’t get out and spread everywhere).
In the spring, however, I noticed a renegade tomato plant coming out of the side of this beautiful and flourishing potted plant – one tomato plant which destroyed the symmetry. I thought it was ugly and pulled the thing out. This odd tomato plant must have hitched a ride with the transplant job I’d done earlier in the year or perhaps some bird had dropped a seed. Well, a couple of weeks later the darn thing came back, and I thought, “This scrappy tomato plant has a will to live. I think I’ll leave it alone and nurture it and see what happens.” And, so it has encircled the table and actually looks quite pretty now and is offering me a variety of tomatoes I did not plant.
How many of us, like this plant, have gone off the wrong path or find ourselves planted in a pot where we don’t feel we belong and can’t get out of! We look to God for mercy in our lives and the Master Gardener sees us as a struggling plant and cares for that plant. He doesn’t pull it up at once because he knows that to do so will destroy the plant. Instead, he puts it on a table where it can have some support and waters it, fertilizes it, keeps it in the sunlight and nurtures it even though it might be better off in another location, even though an ordinary gardener would have simply pulled it out and thrown it away.
Other plants, which do not need all this attention, are left to grow and bear fruit. God pays special attention to those plants which are broken or misplaced or for whatever reason are in great need. God is not an ordinary gardener! The reward for him is that he is, in the end, able to receive beautiful fruits that would not otherwise exist. And hopefully, unlike my tomato plant which cannot think, we human beings, realizing how much mercy and attention God has devoted to us, sooner or later will want to glorify God and thank him forever that instead of being uprooted, we were allowed to grow and flourish and bear fruit.
Perhaps the misplaced tomato plants of life will, in the end, give more glory to God than the ones that never needed special attention. This is why the more weaknesses and struggles we have, the more we can glorify God by allowing him to take care of us and then bear what fruit we can. This plant taught me something about tenacity, the will to succeed against all odds, and in a strange way, a little something about compassion. We sometimes run into other “tomato plants” that are struggling or seem to not be where they belong. Do your bit to help them instead of cutting them off, condemning them or criticizing them about their ugliness. Buy some fertilizer, water them and encourage them to grow. We too can glorify God by simply bearing fruit and growing where we are planted.
Father Gary